[app. f. CLOUD sb., sense 3 + BERRY. The name appears not to be of popular origin; but exact information as to its first use is wanting. Some have conjectured that it is from cloud in the sense of ‘rock, hill,’ but app. without any evidence.]
a. The ‘berry’ or fruit of Rubus Chamæmorus. b. The plant, a small erect sub-shrub allied to the raspberry, growing on high mountains in Wales, the north of Britain, and the north of Europe, and bearing one large white terminal flower, and a large well-flavored orange-colored fruit.
1597. Gerarde, Herbal, III. clvi. Of Cloud-berrie. This plant groweth naturally upon the tops of two high Mountaines … one in Yorkshire called Ingleborough, the other in Lancashire called Pendle … where the cloudes are lower than the tops of the same all winter long, whereupon the people of the countrie haue called them Cloud berries.
1633. T. Johnson, App. Gerarde’s Herbal, 1630. This Knot, Knout or Cloudberrie (for by all these names it is knowne to vs in the North).
1743–5. R. Pococke, Trav. (1886), 46. Near Settle grows a sort of dwarf bramble, the berry of which they call cloud-berry, and the common people cnute-berry.
1846. Sowerby, Brit. Bot. (1864), III. 159. A sprig of the Cloudberry is the badge of the Highland clan Mac Farlane.
attrib. 1856. Shairp, in Knight, Sh. & his Friends, 181. Among a flock of cloudberry bushes on the hillside.
